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| Some Recent Arrivals |
Plenty of others have written up reviews (and mentioned the Umber Hulk poem), so you won't get that here. What I want to do is look at it from the perspective of a solo RPGer.
First off, there's nothing here that's really system specific, although it does lean towards "old school" fantasy. With little effort, you should be able to adapt the stats, when given, to whatever game you use - be it Labyrinth Lord, D&D B/X, USR, Risus, whatever. Ditto for his use of the silver standard.
The included micro adventure, "The Salt Pit", is essentially a dungeon crawl, um, in a salt pit for low level characters. As a discussion on SoloNexus brought up, there are a variety of ways to play a "module" solo.
I chose to play the role of GM, letting Mythic act as a player emulator, thus avoiding the problems having meta-game knowledge might cause. Mythic threw me a curve ball right away when the party (a 1st level Magic User and a 1st level Fighter) came up with a completely unexpected way to meet the objective. It didn't matter in the end. The adventure ended in a TPK - one of those deaths caused by falling damage.
It was a good time and took maybe 2 hours including rolling up my characters in B/X- and the characters missed most of the things they could explore (due to the aforementioned falling). Played this way it was an enjoyable evening's entertainment. In fact, I'm planning to send in another party since the problem still persists.
However, Mr. Shorts has done us solo gamers a favor, perhaps unintentionally.
He has shaded parts of the descriptions - the GM's portion - for each area. Also worked into the adventure, players will have foreknowledge of the general layout of the salt pit. As such, the map doesn't provide as much meta-game knowledge as it could. You could play this as a straight up solitaire crawl - without Mythic or similar - just by avoiding reading the grey sections until you do something that you think merits it.
Of course, it might not be as smooth as randomly generating the contents/encounters, but you can just add a test whether or not the GM's notes are accurate (an idea I'vestolen borrowed from J.F. at SoloNexus and the above mentioned post) by using a d6:
1 Yes and ...
2-3 Yes but...
4-5 No but...
6 No and...
Fill in the blanks however you'd like and roll.
As would be expected, the random treasure table for this adventure is usable as is for solitaire play - within this adventure and others (although it is somewhat "specialized" shall we say?)
"20 Random Forest Encounters" could easily be modified for use in a solo hex crawl. Each encounter is sketched out and once again, GM info is in grey, making it easy to avoid reading too much before deciding on your actions. Here, too, I'd make use of the test for accuracy of the GM's info if you're playing the role of PC and not GM.
Finally, I'll mention the three adventure hooks for the included NPC.
Any one of these hooks can be played as a solo adventure, but the first, "Bugbear Boots" seems to me to lend itself to this the best. "Bugbear Boots" contains little information that the player character couldn't know in advance. Using Mythic, Rory's Story Cubes or whatever you like, there's potential here for a short adventure for a low level party.
First off, there's nothing here that's really system specific, although it does lean towards "old school" fantasy. With little effort, you should be able to adapt the stats, when given, to whatever game you use - be it Labyrinth Lord, D&D B/X, USR, Risus, whatever. Ditto for his use of the silver standard.
The included micro adventure, "The Salt Pit", is essentially a dungeon crawl, um, in a salt pit for low level characters. As a discussion on SoloNexus brought up, there are a variety of ways to play a "module" solo.
I chose to play the role of GM, letting Mythic act as a player emulator, thus avoiding the problems having meta-game knowledge might cause. Mythic threw me a curve ball right away when the party (a 1st level Magic User and a 1st level Fighter) came up with a completely unexpected way to meet the objective. It didn't matter in the end. The adventure ended in a TPK - one of those deaths caused by falling damage.
It was a good time and took maybe 2 hours including rolling up my characters in B/X- and the characters missed most of the things they could explore (due to the aforementioned falling). Played this way it was an enjoyable evening's entertainment. In fact, I'm planning to send in another party since the problem still persists.
However, Mr. Shorts has done us solo gamers a favor, perhaps unintentionally.
He has shaded parts of the descriptions - the GM's portion - for each area. Also worked into the adventure, players will have foreknowledge of the general layout of the salt pit. As such, the map doesn't provide as much meta-game knowledge as it could. You could play this as a straight up solitaire crawl - without Mythic or similar - just by avoiding reading the grey sections until you do something that you think merits it.
Of course, it might not be as smooth as randomly generating the contents/encounters, but you can just add a test whether or not the GM's notes are accurate (an idea I've
1 Yes and ...
2-3 Yes but...
4-5 No but...
6 No and...
Fill in the blanks however you'd like and roll.
As would be expected, the random treasure table for this adventure is usable as is for solitaire play - within this adventure and others (although it is somewhat "specialized" shall we say?)
"20 Random Forest Encounters" could easily be modified for use in a solo hex crawl. Each encounter is sketched out and once again, GM info is in grey, making it easy to avoid reading too much before deciding on your actions. Here, too, I'd make use of the test for accuracy of the GM's info if you're playing the role of PC and not GM.
Finally, I'll mention the three adventure hooks for the included NPC.
Any one of these hooks can be played as a solo adventure, but the first, "Bugbear Boots" seems to me to lend itself to this the best. "Bugbear Boots" contains little information that the player character couldn't know in advance. Using Mythic, Rory's Story Cubes or whatever you like, there's potential here for a short adventure for a low level party.
The other two will require more modification, as some of the information your character shouldn't have -although a Mythic interrupt or altered scene could make their info moot anyway.
****
Recommendation: If you have $3.50, I think this is absolutely worth picking up if you play solo. At the very least, you'll be supporting a creative effort that benefits the hobby. Even better, you get at least two solitaire gaming sessions out of the material included.
For those who prefer e-publications, it's available now as a PDF as well for $2.50.
Recommendation: If you have $3.50, I think this is absolutely worth picking up if you play solo. At the very least, you'll be supporting a creative effort that benefits the hobby. Even better, you get at least two solitaire gaming sessions out of the material included.
For those who prefer e-publications, it's available now as a PDF as well for $2.50.
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